So It Was You

Jian Lanshan's Adam's apple bobbed violently, a look of absolute, uncontainable fanaticism surging in the depths of his eyes.

This peerless sword Dao that could completely annihilate even spiritual energy was something he had never seen before, not even in the Sword Tomb that the Taishang Sword Sect had worshipped for millions of years!

If he could claim such an opportunity for himself, breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage would be just around the corner.

He turned his head extremely slowly.

His cold, gloomy eyes, looking as if they were regarding a stray dog by the roadside, finally fell upon Gu Yang's tall and straight figure, clad in coarse gray linen.

There was no spiritual energy leaking out, nor any magical treasures protecting his body.

In this old monster's perception, the young man before him was like a dull, gray stone devoid of any threat.

Gu Yang did not speak.

His abyss-like black eyes held no ripples, merely gazing with extreme calmness at Jian Lanshan suspended in mid-air.

In his sea of consciousness.

The seventh-tier Dao Platform, with its seven exquisite apertures, silently and frantically circulated at this moment.

The world before Gu Yang's eyes was instantly stripped of its colors and superficial appearances.

Beneath Jian Lanshan's seemingly transcendent and immortal-like frost-white Dharma robe.

Countless extremely complex blood-red threads, representing karma and slaughter, were tightly entangled around his Golden Core like a messy ball of hemp.

And among them was an extremely hidden karma thread, exuding bone-piercing extreme cold and twisted sword intent.

In the incredibly faint instant it touched Gu Yang's line of sight, it emitted an extremely familiar homologous fluctuation.

The corners of Gu Yang's thin lips pressed together ever so slightly into a cold, straight line.

It was exactly the same as the sword intent that had killed Deacon Wang of the Alchemy Hall.

Without the slightest deviation.

The temperature in the air, with Jian Lanshan's descent, was plummeting below the freezing point at an extremely violent speed.

A layer of extremely blinding frost condensed on the dead, black scorched earth.

The chilling air was like countless white venomous snakes flicking their tongues, slithering along the cracks in the ground, madly and insidiously spreading toward Gu Yang's ankles.

Jian Lanshan hovered high above in mid-air.

Those sharp, gloomy triangular eyes, like those of a vulture, quickly regained the extremely deep calculation of an old fox after a brief moment of fanaticism.

He did not attack immediately.

In this dog-eat-dog cultivation world, old monsters who managed to live to the peak of the late Core Formation stage were most afraid of capsizing in a gutter.

The young man in coarse gray linen before him had no spiritual energy fluctuations whatsoever, looking exactly like a mortal.

But the poison peak that had been brutally wiped out by half, and the lingering destructive sword intent in the air that made even his soul tremble, were frantically issuing a fatal warning.

You look quite unfamiliar, sir.

Jian Lanshan's shriveled lips moved slightly, his voice sounding like two blocks of ten-thousand-year-old profound ice grating harshly against each other.

He deliberately put on the superior air of a core elder of the Taishang Sword Sect, yet his tone carried an extremely hidden probe.

Such shocking residual sword intent could never come from a nameless nobody. May I ask which sect you hail from? Perhaps you even share some origin with my Taishang Sword Sect.

The old fox was throwing out bait.

If the other party was a hidden genius with a strong background, he would naturally declare his sect.

If the other party was just a rogue cultivator who had dumb luck and picked up an ancient inheritance, then he would not hesitate to skin him alive and pull out his tendons.

Gu Yang did not reply.

Like an eternally unmoving gray demon god, his abyssal black eyes stared with extreme coldness at the old man in mid-air.

The corners of Gu Yang's thin lips twitched ever so slightly.

There was no anger, no hatred, only the absolute coldness of a hunter who had confirmed the coordinates of his prey.

Three months ago, Outer Sect of the Falling Cloud Sect, Blood Moon Ridge.

Gu Yang spat out these few words extremely slowly, his voice completely flat, like an emotionless corpse stating a fact.

That Taishang Absolute Cold Sword Qi that precisely pierced Deacon Wang's heart meridian...

Gu Yang paused for half a breath, his black eyes devoid of any human emotion pinned dead on Jian Lanshan's face.

It was thirty percent more composed than this probing aura you are releasing right now.

Jian Lanshan's gloomy triangular eyes violently contracted to the size of pinpricks the very instant he heard the words Falling Cloud Sect!

Countless extremely vicious thoughts flashed through the old fox's mind in an instant.

That blood-red karma hidden beneath layers of conspiracy was brutally yanked out into the open by this single sentence.

Falling Cloud Sect... Blood Moon Ridge...

The transcendent and immortal-like demeanor on Jian Lanshan's face instantly twisted and tore apart at this moment, like a painting splashed with sulfuric acid.

He stared fixedly at Gu Yang's handsome yet iron-hard face, finally overlapping the face before him with the bait in the intelligence files who had his cultivation crippled and was thrown into a dead zone.

I was wondering who it was... So it's you, that scapegoat of a stray dog!

Jian Lanshan laughed out of extreme anger, his laughter as piercing as a night owl's.

Gu Yang! You actually didn't die in the spatial turbulence, and even had the dumb luck to obtain such an ancient sword Dao inheritance!

Having confirmed his identity, the last shred of apprehension in Jian Lanshan's heart completely vanished into thin air.

An abandoned pawn of the Falling Cloud Sect, a scapegoat with no background.

So what if he had obtained a heaven-shaking inheritance?

In the face of absolute realm suppression, this would only be a peerless grand gift extremely generously delivered into the hands of him, Jian Lanshan, by the Heavenly Dao!

Since your life is tough and you didn't die completely, then today, this old man will show great mercy and send you on your way once again!

Jian Lanshan wasted no more words; his killing intent erupted explosively like a breached dam!

Boom!!!

The terrifying coercion of the peak late Core Formation stage, like a hundred thousand icebergs, brutally smashed down directly from thousands of feet in the air!

The air within a radius of several miles was violently and forcibly emptied in this instant.

The sky full of grayish-white miasma was instantly frozen into countless sharp ice blades, madly strangling toward Gu Yang along with the coercion.

This was an unreserved realm suppression.

In Jian Lanshan's common sense, for an early Core Formation cultivator facing the coercion lock of a peak late Core Formation cultivator, even moving a finger was an extremely extravagant fantasy.

They could only kneel on the ground in extreme humiliation, their Golden Core forcefully crushed by the vast spiritual pressure.

However.

The extremely cruel smile on Jian Lanshan's face completely froze on his withered cheeks in the next breath.

The terrifying coercion, like a hundred thousand icebergs, in the incredibly faint instant it approached within three feet of Gu Yang.

Crack...

An extremely tiny yet scalp-numbing shattering sound rang out.

There was no explosion of spiritual energy clashing, nor any earth-shattering roar.

Jian Lanshan's divine sense coercion, enough to crush a mountaintop, was like crashing into a terrifying abyss that simply had no bottom.

Gu Yang did not even bat an eyelid.

Deep within his dantian, that Extreme Dao Dark Gold Demonic Core, as heavy as Mount Tai and covered with eight Hell-Suppressing Demonic Runes, merely rotated on its axis extremely slowly by a ten-thousandth of a revolution.

An absolute gravitational force, with a mass so colossal it was enough to distort the physical laws of this world, explosively surged out of his body!

Sizzle sizzle sizzle—

The sky full of sharp ice blades strangling toward him, along with that extremely arrogant late-stage coercion.